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This was announced in early July and yet I completely missed it until yesterday. Library of Congress: Library of Congress Offers Unprecedented Access to North Korean Serial Collection. “Home to one of the most prominent North Korean collections in the Western Hemisphere, the Asian Division at the Library of Congress has rolled out the North Korean Serials Database, an online indexing tool that offers researchers enhanced access to periodicals and articles published as far back as the 1940s.”

BetaNews: Avast pulls the latest version of CCleaner following privacy controversy. “Piriform rolled out updates for CCleaner on a monthly basis, and this is something that has continued since Avast took over. The latest update, CCleaner 5.45, wasn’t at all well received due to a number of changes affecting privacy, and the company’s response to the matter proved to be unsatisfactory — to say the least. Now it seems that Avast has seen the light, and pulled the latest update.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-to Geek: Here’s What You Should Use Instead of CCleaner. “CCleaner just became worse. The popular system-cleaning tool now always runs in the background, nagging you and reporting anonymous data back to the company’s servers. We don’t recommend you upgrade to CCleaner 5.45. Here’s what you should use instead.”

Lifehacker: Mailist Is Instapaper for Email Addicts. “We know we’re not supposed to let email run our lives, but we do it anyway. We use email as a to-do list, as an idea saver, as a place to email ourselves notes. And if that works for you, then here’s one more tool: The free Mailist extension for Chrome and Firefox collects your unread bookmarks and emails them back to you once a week.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: Strategists raise alarms about Facebook delays in approving Hispanic political ads. “Political strategists say recent moves by Facebook to secure its powerful advertising engine are hampering their ability to communicate with Hispanics and Spanish-speaking audiences ahead of the midterm elections. New procedures adopted by Facebook in response to Russian meddling and allegations of racially discriminatory ad practices often require several days for the company to review political ads targeted to ethnic groups, while ads that target broader audiences are approved immediately, said strategists for three liberal organizations, Priorities USA, Latino Victory and Win Dem PAC.”

The Atlantic: As Memes Evolve, Apps Are Struggling to Keep Up. “Last year, Alex, a 19-year-old in California who runs a network of Instagram pages dedicated to publishing memes, became so frustrated with the current apps for making memes that she hired a developer to build her own. She spent $3,000 on the project, which she says has saved her hours of time and frustration.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs on Security: The Year Targeted Phishing Went Mainstream. “It has never been easier for scam artists to launch convincing, targeted phishing and extortion scams that are automated on a global scale. And given the sheer volume of hacked and stolen personal data now available online, it seems almost certain we will soon witness many variations on these phishing campaigns that leverage customized data elements to enhance their effectiveness.”

The Next Web: World class AI experts share what their favorite algorithm is. “From keeping our inboxes free from SPAM to mining your favorite cryptocurrencies, algorithms are all around us. While we feel like we’re drowning in an ocean of big data, clever algorithms are actually helping us to make sense of it all. And although these algorithms are ruling the world, we seem to know very little about them. How do they work? By whom were they created?” Only four experts. I’d love to see a more extended version of this article. Good evening, Internet…

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